December 2009

Wednesday Writer’s Workshop: A Christmas Gift

12.23.2009

Yes, yes, yes–I know that everyone is overwhelmed with the holidays.  But really, you shouldn’t close your writer’s eye at such a rich time.  So, here’s another exercise that you can do in your mind, as and when it occurs to you. Pick the second oldest person in your family.  What is the first gift [...]

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Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas….

12.21.2009

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Wednesday Writer’s Workshop: The Tao of Word Choice

12.15.2009

As writers, all we have to work with is our words.  They’re the currency of our craft; we use them to say, to show, to explain, to tell, to create an idea or a world or even just a person.  Unfortunately, words are just too easy to come by–and often we spill our stories with [...]

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How To Beat The Deadline Trap

12.14.2009

As I lolled in the sand in a state of total relaxation and bliss, I had a revelation…

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Giveaway: Readers for those with Short-Arm Syndrome

12.11.2009

My mom developed a vision problem when I was a kid, and I remember that it really scared me. Her arms got too short to be able to look up numbers in the telephone book. The problem quickly got worse. Soon her arms weren’t long enough to read the newspaper and then books. Eventually she [...]

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Wednesday Writer’s Workshop: Dreaded Deadlines

12.09.2009

There’s an old saw that may or may not be a Joan Rivers joke: “Men–can’t live with them and can’t live without them!” That’s how I feel about deadlines. As someone who has plied the freelancers trade for lo! these many years, you’d think I’d have conquered my deadline issues long ago. Ha! I invariably [...]

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What Makes a Home?

12.06.2009

We never do leave home. Every house we’ve ever lived in has helped form us into who we are, has followed along with us every step of the way.

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Creative in the Kitchen? Win a trip to NYC!

12.03.2009

Julia Child doesn’t give a recipe for Puff Pastry in her almost-encyclopedic Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Or rather, the recipe she gives is for the simple little piped (or flung from a spoon) blobs of dough that we know as cream puffs.  To get the Real Puff Pastry, the kind you roll out [...]

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Wednesday Writer’s Workshop: Writer’s Block

12.02.2009

I’ve just been wandering through my ByJane Archives seeing if there’s anything there that I can do a quick and dirty snatch and grab for this week’s Wednesday Writer’s Workshop.  Just a cursory glance tells me that I whine a lot. Okay, I knew that already.   A lot of my writing about writing in [...]

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